The Great Library of Alexandria
The Great Library of Alexandria was part of a larger research institution (the Museum, from Mouseion, "shrine of the Muses"), dedicated to the nine goddesses of the arts.
The Ptolemaic kings' sponsorship saw the Library rapidly acquire between 40,000 and 400,000 papyrus scrolls.
Numerous influential scholars, including Zenodotus of Ephesus, Callimachus, Apollonius of Rhodes, Eratosthenes of Cyrene, Aristophanes of Byzantium and Aristarchus of Samothrace, worked in the combined facility.
The Library declined gradually between 145 BCE when Ptolemy VIII Physcon purged Alexandria's intellectuals and the Palmyrene invasion of Egypt (270-5 CE).
A daughter library established during Ptolemy III Euergetes's reign in the Serapeum, a temple to the Greco-Egyptian god Serapis, was vandalised and demolished in 391 CE.
